An investigation into how contemporary women filmmakers take up the provocative tradition finds an important object in the work of French filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović. Since the release of her breakthrough feature Innocence in 2004, critics have lauded Hadžihalilović as a talented and exciting auteur of beautiful, evocative art cinema. Fabien Lemercier describes her as ‘talented and highly original’; Vivian Sobchack praises Hadžihalilović as an ‘assured’ and promising director; and Jonathan Romney deems her ‘an audacious talent’. Compliments also flowed following the release of her follow-up Évolution (2015), with Laura Kern naming Hadžihalilović a ‘virtuoso’. The film also won the Special Jury Prize at the 2015 San Sebastián International Film Festival. Hadžihalilović’s oeuvre so far consists of several visually impressive and distinctive works. She has four shorts: a student film, La première mort de Nono (1987), an educational short for television Good Boys Use Condoms (1998), and two woodland fantasies, Nectar (2014) and De Natura (2018). She has also written and directed four features: Mimi (La bouche de Jean-Pierre, 1996), Innocence, Évolution and Earwig (2021). She works frequently with screenwriters Geoff Cox and Alantė Kavaitė, and has herself collaborated regularly on Gaspar Noé’s projects, contributing to the screenplay for Enter the Void (2009) and editing his films Carne (1991) and I Stand Alone (Seul contre tous, 1998). Acclaimed for her lush and painterly visual style and the uncanny, fairytale-like tone of her storytelling, Hadžihalilović is an auteur of importance in contemporary art cinema.

Hadžihalilović’s films also bear an aura of transgression. Without exception, her features centre on child protagonists between the ages of six and twelve. These characters all find themselves in unsettling situations, overseen by shadowy adult caretakers with ambiguous motives. Mimi is a story about an eleven-year-old girl, Mimi (Sandra Sammartino), whose mother attempts suicide. When Mimi goes to live with her aunt and her aunt’s sleazy boyfriend, the older man takes a predatory interest in the young girl. Innocence concerns a mysterious boarding school secreted in a lush forest.